Let me ask you, if a subject presents to a doctor complaining of a pain, how does the doctor measure the intensity of that pain? To my knowledge, there is only one way: by asking the subject, perhaps to rate the pain ('on a scale of 1 to 5...') or perhaps by observing behavioural cues such as grimaces or bodily movements. So

Neuroscientific investigation has a whole battery of tests to measure emotion. — Questioner

Neuroscience may have many tests to measure correlates of emotion, but emotion, like pain, can only be experienced first person. So whatever test performed would have to be validated against the subjects reports.

Are you familiar with the expression 'the explanatory gap' in philosophy?

"In Joseph Levine’s formulation, the explanatory gap names a specific failure of intelligibility rather than a dramatic metaphysical puzzle. Levine’s point is that even if we possessed a complete and correct physical account of the brain—covering all neural mechanisms, causal roles, and functional organization—it would still be unclear why those physical facts give rise to particular qualitative experiences. The gap appears when we move from physical or functional descriptions to phenomenal character: nothing in the physical story seems to explain why pain feels the way it does, or why color experience has its distinctive qualitative nature. Unlike later discussions of the “hard problem,” Levine does not claim that consciousness is therefore inexplicable in principle or non-physical; rather, he argues that current forms of physical explanation leave an unresolved conceptual gap between objective accounts and subjective experience, a gap that cannot be closed simply by adding more neuroscientific detail.' Joseph Levine, “Materialism and Qualia: The Explanatory Gap” (1983), Pacific Philosophical Quarterly.

Yes the author is right, we don’t know what any of those things are. We know very little about the building blocks of our world.
The reason I say electricity has probably something to do with consciousness is that it has some remarkable qualities which are not in any way present in matter, (if we are thinking of matter in isolation), it provides energy for atoms, which can be provided in relative quantities, it readily forms into fields and it behaves as though it can move around at the speed of light. It almost behaves like an omnipotent God, outside of space and time. It provides the animation in living processes, and provides all sorts of charge fields and electrical processes in living bodies.

Now going back to the idea that consciousness is fundamental like space, time, physical material. What do you think is going on in a star, in terms of consciousness. This is important because the majority of the material in the universe is either present in a star, or has been in the past. A star is like a melting pot in which matter dissolves into plasma, meaning the strong and weak atomic forces somehow merge, we can observe powerful magnetic forces at play in our local star and I can’t imagine what electricity is up to in a place like that. Where is the consciousness in all that?

As for your question about what part electricity may play in consciousness, well, I’m just guessing like everyone else. But for me it is a way in, a portal for consciousness, spirit, perhaps to come into the physical world. As I said before, I see the physical world as an artificial construct, the real world being made up of consciousness and mind, which acts out certain things in the artificial world for some reason, or other.

Quite right. However, in order to diagnose the purported performative incoherence, Bitbol must presuppose universally binding normative standards of judgment (correctness, error, and order) that he then withholds from metaphysical inquiry. If the standards are universally binding, then reason has authority beyond any particular stance, and it becomes unclear why that authority should suddenly stop at metaphysics. If they are not universally binding, then Bitbol’s charge of incoherence loses its force because the diagnosis is only valid from within the (non-universal) scope of the framework from which it is made. — Esse Quam Videri

Good point. I would add that this also distinguish Bitbol from Nagarjuna. The latter only accepts the binding normative standards to show that, according to him, the metaphysical positions of his opponents are incoherent. However, he doesn't accept them as true for himself.

I do accept both things. However, this doesn't exclude the possibility that some form of consciousness is fundamental as it is suggested by the second 'horn' of the dilemma. — boundless

It depends what you mean by "fundamental". Clearly, consciousness is not the origin of the physical world and does not exist independently of some physical substrate. That suggests that it is the physical world that is fundamental. So what do you mean by "fundamental".

The fact that there is no 'perfect model' that mirrors the way the world isn't enough to say that we get no knowledge of the 'things in themselves'. In other words, my question is: according to all these thinkers is there a reason why our predictive models work? Is it just a 'brute fact'? — boundless

You are right to think that our not knowing all about everything does not mean that we know nothing about anything. However, the reason why our predictive models work is that we test their predictive power. If they fail, we revise the model or abandon it. What more do you want?

nothing in the physical story seems to explain why pain feels the way it does, or why color experience has its distinctive qualitative nature. — Wayfarer

I'm not sure that there is a real question here. It seems to presume that pain might not feel the way it does or colour might have some different qualitative nature. But those possibilities seem like empty gestures to me.

he argues that current forms of physical explanation leave an unresolved conceptual gap between objective accounts and subjective experience, a gap that cannot be closed simply by adding more neuroscientific detail — Wayfarer

That's true. However, it seems to me to follow that the metaphor of the gap that can't be closed does not work. It assumes that the two sides of the gap are, somehow, in the same category or commensurable. But physics is designed to exclude anything that doesn't fit its methodology. Nothing wrong with that, until you start claiming that the physical world is the only real world.

As I said before, I see the physical world as an artificial construct, the real world being made up of consciousness and mind, which acts out certain things in the artificial world for some reason, or other. — Punshhh

There's no doubt that the physical world, as treated in physics, is an artificial construct, so I agree that it has no special claim to be the real world. However, I see consciousness and mind, as conceived here, as an off-shoot of that construct. The real world has both as natural inhabitants and co-existents. In the real world, physics needs conscious, mindful people and conscious, mindful people need the physical world.

Are you suggesting there are not ways to determine how a person feels? — Questioner

Any time someone says they measured something, they give the measurement in units. 83 decibels. 25 cm. 100 mps. -30 inHg. That kind of thing. I would like to hear about the measurements of emotion, from any one of the "whole battery of tests."

Any time someone says they measured something, they give the measurement in units. 83 decibels. 25 cm. 100 mps. -30 inHg. That kind of thing. I would like to hear about the measurements of emotion, from any one of the "whole battery of tests." — Patterner

You've never heard of megahurts?

You've never heard of megahurts? — wonderer1

Is that something that hurts an awful lot? Like "I'm gonna put you in a world of pain!" :grin:

Assuming you mean megahertz, yes, I've heard of it. I was not listing every unit of measurement. I was only giving a few examples.


Edit: Or did you mean emotions are measured in megahertz?

It depends what you mean by "fundamental". Clearly, consciousness is not the origin of the physical world and does not exist independently of some physical substrate. That suggests that it is the physical world that is fundamental. So what do you mean by "fundamental". — Ludwig V

I disagree about the 'clearly'. Theists, panentheists, idealists etc would have a word about it. Even someone like Spinoza would disagree. For him the 'physical' and the 'mental' are two attributes of the one Substance - so to him neither of them is foundational to the other.

The fact that scientific evidence suggests that all individual sentient beings can't exist without a physical basis doesn't exclude all metaphysical models that posit consciousness as fundamental. One might think that scientific knowledge doesn't give us a complete knowledge about the physical world.

The physical world seems to have an intelligible structure. If consciousness isn't fundamental in some sense, how can we explain that?

You are right to think that our not knowing all about everything does not mean that we know nothing about anything. However, the reason why our predictive models work is that we test their predictive power. If they fail, we revise the model or abandon it. What more do you want? — Ludwig V

An explanation that explains why our conceptual models work that isn't reduced to a mere "they work because experience tells us they work". This kind of answer means either that:
(1) "it just happens that the physical world has an intelligible structure", i.e. there is no explanation, it's just so.
(2) "intelligbility is illusory". It appears that there the physical world has an intelligible structure but this isn't true.

Levine’s point is that even if we possessed a complete and correct physical account of the brain—covering all neural mechanisms, causal roles, and functional organization—it would still be unclear why those physical facts give rise to particular qualitative experiences. The gap appears when we move from physical or functional descriptions to phenomenal character: nothing in the physical story seems to explain why pain feels the way it does, — Wayfarer

Levine opens Chapter Four, The Explanatory Gap, in Consciousness with this -

“We want to know not only that such-and-such is the case, but also why it is the case. If nature is one large, lawful, orderly system, as the materialist (or the naturalist) insists, then it should be possible to explain the occurrence of any part of that system in terms of basic principles that govern nature as a whole.”

Well, give it time. There are plenty of scientists and philosophers who believe that science is on track to one day discover how perception associating with memories and feelings give rise to qualia.

And there are those who believe qualia is not a problem that materialism needs to address.

I’d also like to mention that it is not an objective of neurobiology to ask “why?” but to ask “how?” – and by the end of that chapter, Levine changes his scope –

I think the explanation of gappiness is a very deep problem, and … the problem of explaining how the physical gives rise to the phenomenal and the problem of explaining the peculiar features of phenomenal concepts are intimately connected…

We’ve already mentioned the understanding of the word “problem” in science as a direction for further research, and perhaps this is how Levine means it here, too.

Anyway, there is a biological explanation for why pain feels the way it does – our brains evolved a system of specialized nerve endings that detect harmful stimuli and then send electrical signals via the nervous system to the brain (thalamus, cortex) where the signals are interpreted as pain, and then we respond to those signals.

It wouldn’t have worked if detecting harmful stimuli felt good! No evolutionary advantage in that.

An understanding of why we are the way we are must involve our evolutionary history.

I am left with this question - If not the brain producing consciousness, and qualia, then what?

All evidence points to it being the brain, and that is the direction in which future research should go.

he argues that current forms of physical explanation leave an unresolved conceptual gap between objective accounts and subjective experience, a gap that cannot be closed simply by adding more neuroscientific detail.' — Wayfarer

Well, many would disagree with him, and some would say it does not matter.

Anyway, yes, we might say that there is only one person inside any one head, but we have our ways of communicating our existence – how it impacts on us - in a multitude of ways. Both science and philosophy rely on it.

What does a smile tell you about the person smiling? We are even able to discriminate between different kinds of smiles. Do you have to have epistemic knowledge about what the smiler is feeling – experience the specific activity of their amygdala - in order to understand the message of the smile? That would be like saying I cannot study the gravity on the moon unless I feel it.

Perception of emotional expressions (fundamental to social development) has been the focus of much research in infants –

Facial and vocal expressions of emotion convey communicative intent, provide a basis for fostering shared experience, are central to the development of emotion regulation, and guide infant exploratory behavior (Gross, 1998; Saarni, Campos, Camras, & Witherington, 2006; Walker-Andrews, 1997). Within the first half year of life, infants are sensitive to emotional information in facial and vocal expressions, (Field, Woodson, Greenberg, & Cohen, 1982; Flom & Bahrick, 2007; Walker-Andrews, 1997), and in the prosodic contours of speech (Fernald, 1985, 1989; Papousek, Bornstein, Nuzzo, Papousek, & Symmes, 1990). Much research has focused on infant discrimination of adult emotional expressions (see Walker-Andrews, 1997; Witherington, Campos, Harriger, Bryan, Margett, 2010 for reviews), particularly for static faces. By 4 months of age infants can discriminate among static faces depicting happy, sad, and fearful expressions (Barrera & Mauer, 1981; Field, Woodson, Greenberg & Cohen, 1982; Field, Woodson, Cohen, Greenberg, Garcia, & Collins, 1983; La Barbera, Izard, Vietze, & Parisi, 1976). For example, La Barbera and colleagues (1976) found that 4- to 6-month-olds discriminated pictures of joyful, angry, and neutral facial expressions and preferred to look at joyful expressions. Between 5 and 7 months of age, infants discriminate between a wider range of static facial expressions including happiness, fear, anger, surprise, and sadness, and can generalize across expressions of varying intensity and across different examples of an expression performed by either the same or different individuals (Bornstein & Arterberry, 2003; Caron, Caron, & MacLean, 1988; Ludman & Nelson, 1988; Nelson & Dolgin, 1985; Nelson, Morse, & Leavitt, 1979; Serrano, Iglesias, & Loeches, 1992).
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3843965/

Shall this research be disregarded because the researcher did not feel what the baby was feeling?

As for the “how do we measure?” question – here’s an example – in a study entitled Infants' facial electromyographic responses to the sight of emotional interpersonal touch – which investigated infants' sensitivity to the emotional valence of observed touches -

To investigate this issue, we measured facial electromyographic (EMG) activity in response to positive (caress) and negative (scratches) observed touches in a sample of 11-month-old infants. Facial EMG activity was measured over the zygomaticus major (ZM) and corrugator supercilii muscles, respectively involved in positive (i.e., smiling) and negative (i.e., frowning) facial expressions. Results have shown distinct activations of the ZM during the observation of scratches and caresses. In particular, significantly greater activation of the ZM (smiling muscle) emerged specifically in response to the observation of caresses compared to scratches. Our finding suggests that, in infancy, observed affective touches can evoke emotional facial reactions.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38873865/

Here’s an interesting perspective from Hannah Arendt – explored in a section of The Life of the Mind – that the interplay of “being” and “appearing” frames our very existence, that we are no less object than subject. She writes:

Nothing could appear, the word “appearance” would make no sense, if recipients of appearances did not exist — living creatures able to acknowledge, recognize, and react to — in flight or desire, approval or disapproval, blame or praise — what is not merely there but appears to them and is meant for their perception. In this world which we enter, appearing from a nowhere, and from which we disappear into a nowhere, Being and Appearing coincide… Nothing and nobody exist in this world whose very being does not presuppose a spectator. In other words, nothing that is, insofar as it appears, exists in the singular; everything that is is meant to be perceived by somebody… Plurality is the law of the earth.

Since sentient beings — [humans] and animals, to whom things appear and who as recipients guarantee their reality — are themselves also appearances, meant and able both to see and be seen, hear and be heard, touch and be touched, they are never mere subjects and can never be understood as such; they are no less “objective” than stone and bridge. The worldliness of living things means that there is no subject that is not also an object and appears as such to somebody else, who guarantees its “objective” reality. What we usually call “consciousness,” the fact that I am aware of myself and therefore in a sense can appear to myself, would never suffice to guarantee reality… Seen from the perspective of the world, every creature born into it arrives well equipped to deal with a world in which Being and Appearing coincide; they are fit for worldly existence.

This calls to mind something I posted previously, that consciousness is intimately interconnected to the environment -

Information in > consciousness happens > information out

This represents a part of the causal cycle involved in the formation of consciousness – part of a continual loop of lived experience –

… world > body + brain > world > body + brain > world > body + brain …. and so on….

How does this happen? Short answer: By the electrochemical functioning of neurons.

I want to end this post by saying thank you for giving me so much to think about.

I would like to hear about the measurements of emotion, from any one of the "whole battery of tests." — Patterner

Well, here is a link to the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale DASS-42 test to see how you're feeling

https://www.healthfocuspsychology.com.au/tools/dass-42/

I’d also like to mention that it is not an objective of neurobiology to ask “why?” but to ask “how?” — Questioner

OK, how does the brain produce consciousness? Your answer is to give it time, science will find a way. Pretend it's a thousand years in the future and we still don't have an explanation. At what point do we stop giving it time and realize there's some fundamental problem going on, like a category error?

OK, how does the brain produce consciousness? — RogueAI

If you read the entirety of my post, you'll better understand my position.

Besides, I'm not a neurobiologist

Let's go back to my earlier question about Mary: Suppose Mary falls and hits her head and says she can't feel any emotions anymore. Her body still displays all the physical signs of emotions, but Mary claims to never actually feel any emotion anymore. How would neuroscience verify this claim? Suppose her brain is studied and everything is normal. Do we not believe her?

Well, here is a link to the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale DASS-42 test to see how you're feeling — Questioner

Ah. Self-reporting. I thought you meant some kind of measuring device.

Let's go back to my earlier question about Mary: Suppose Mary falls and hits her head and says she can't feel any emotions anymore. Her body still displays all the physical signs of emotions, but Mary claims to never actually feel any emotion anymore. How would neuroscience verify this claim? Suppose her brain is studied and everything is normal. Do we not believe her? — RogueAI

Sounds like Mary is either delusional or lying. Brain trauma can interfere with the emotional response, but that would manifest in physical symptoms, like monotone speaking, no change in facial expression, avoidance of eye contact and neutral body language (i.e. relaxed and staying still in a situation where they should be tense)

Also - if she really "felt no emotions" the injury to one of these structures would be detected: hypothalamus, amygdala, hippocampus

Sounds like Mary is either delusional or lying. Brain trauma can interfere with the emotional response, but that would manifest in physical symptoms, like monotone speaking, no change in facial expression, avoidance of eye contact and neutral body language (i.e. relaxed and staying still in a situation where they should be tense)

Also - if she really "felt no emotions" the injury to the one of these structures would be detected: hypothalamus, amygdala, hippocampus — Questioner

Isn't it possible that a small unnoticeable change to a region of the brain could result in her condition? Or it could be a psychological condition that a brain scan will never pick up?

Isn't it possible that a small unnoticeable change to a region of the brain could result in her condition? Or it could be a psychological condition that a brain scan will never pick up? — RogueAI

I guess so.

Sorry, I don't understand the purpose of these questions in the context of this discussion.

My point is that there should be some healthy skepticism about how good neuroscience is at detecting emotions. It can detect physical correlates of emotional states, but doesn't provide any information about the content of the emotional state- the famous what is it like? question. And in the example I gave, neuroscience cannot tell us whether we should believe a person who claims to not feel any emotions.

neuroscience cannot tell us whether we should believe a person who claims to not feel any emotions. — RogueAI

Well, Mary would probably be excluded from the study.

but doesn't provide any information about the content of the emotional state- the famous what is it like? — RogueAI

Why does this matter?

The physical world seems to have an intelligible structure. If consciousness isn't fundamental in some sense, how can we explain that? — boundless

I'm sorry. I didn't mean to imply that consciousness isn't fundamental in some sense. I was just asking in what sense you think it is fundamental. Obviously, you don't mean in the sense that it is the causal origin of the world.

An explanation that explains why our conceptual models work that isn't reduced to a mere "they work because experience tells us they work". — boundless

So you accept that they do work. But if they work, they provide an explanation - that's what conceptual structures do, isn't it?

This kind of answer means either that:
(1) "it just happens that the physical world has an intelligible structure", i.e. there is no explanation, it's just so.
(2) "intelligbility is illusory". It appears that there the physical world has an intelligible structure but this isn't true. — boundless

I don't understand the first alternative. If the world has an intelligible structure, then there is an explanation why things are the way they are.
As to the second, it happens all the time that we think we have an account of the world and it turns out to be wrong. We just set to work to devise another, better, one.

but doesn't provide any information about the content of the emotional state- the famous what is it like?
— RogueAI

Why does this matter? — Questioner

Isn't science supposed to be explanatory? If science cannot answer the "what is it like?" question, isn't that a huge failure?

Isn't science supposed to be explanatory? If science cannot answer the "what is it like?" question, isn't that a huge failure? — RogueAI

No.

Of course it is. That's the entire topic of this conversation. How does consciousness come about?

Isn't science supposed to be explanatory? If science cannot answer the "what is it like?" question, isn't that a huge failure?
— RogueAI

No. — Questioner

:roll:

give it time — Questioner

It’s not a matter of time, or more research. Consider this passage you yourself posted in another conversation:

If only the spectators or auditors are infected by the feelings which the author has felt, it is art.

To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself then, by means of movements, lines, colours, sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feeling that others may experience the same feeling—this is the activity of art.

Art is a human activity, consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings, and also experience them. ~ Tolstoy — Questioner

A materialist explanation of a work of art would be that it comprises these materials that make up the surface on which the paint is applied, that the various pigments comprise such and such chemical bases, that react together in such and such a way as to produce the various hues and shades that are visible to the observer.

Do you think that such an account, no matter how detailed, will ever satisfy the requirements given here by Tolstoy?

consciousness is intimately interconnected to the environment -

Information in > consciousness happens > information out

This represents a part of the causal cycle involved in the formation of consciousness – part of a continual loop of lived experience –

… world > body + brain > world > body + brain > world > body + brain …. and so on….

How does this happen? Short answer: By the electrochemical functioning of neurons. — Questioner

But here, you're singling out one layer in this complex and dynamic whole, and claiming that 'everything' is derived from that layer. That is, after all, exactly what reductionism does - it reduces (or tries to reduce) consciousness, intentionality, rational inference, and so on, to the level of the so-called 'hard sciences', where absolute certainty is thought to be obtainable, where everything can be made subject to so-called 'scientific method'. I'm not going to try and give a detailed account of what I think it wrong with that, other than registering it here.

“We want to know not only that such-and-such is the case, but also why it is the case. If nature is one large, lawful, orderly system, as the materialist (or the naturalist) insists, then it should be possible to explain the occurrence of any part of that system in terms of basic principles that govern nature as a whole.” — Levine

Of course. The problem is assuming the things we know from our physical sciences are a complete list of the basic principles that govern nature.

Isn't science supposed to be explanatory? If science cannot answer the "what is it like?" question, isn't that a huge failure? — RogueAI

It might be that science is just not set up to answer questions like "what is it like". Myself, I don't think that question has an answer at all. The only way to know what it is like is to experience it.

it reduces (or tries to reduce) consciousness, intentionality, rational inference, and so on, to the level of the so-called 'hard sciences', where absolute certainty is thought to be obtainable — Wayfarer

The irony is that certainty is never obtained in the hard sciences. No scientific theory can ever be proven to be true. While many people fail to understand this fact, it may be that many, or even most, scientists do not fail to understand it.

In one sense we know that consciousness, intentionailty, rational inference and so on are not neural activity, because they are simply different ideas. We consciously experience the former and not the latter. On the other hand it is possible, although it can never be proven, that the former exist only because of the latter. It is also possible that the former somehow, in some way we cannot really fathom, have their own existence, and that the latter is just what they look like to the senses. That also can never be proven.

It might be that science is just not set up to answer questions like "what is it like". Myself, I don't think that question has an answer at all. The only way to know what it is like is to experience it. — Ludwig V

Yes, what it is like cannot be subject to ontological analysis, even though we may be able to give inadequate verbal descriptions of it. The descriptions, if they are to be intelligible, are always in terms of sense objects and bodily states, sensations and feelings.

physics is designed to exclude anything that doesn't fit its methodology. Nothing wrong with that, until you start claiming that the physical world is the only real world. — Ludwig V

What the 'explanatory gap' and 'hard problem' arguments are aimed at, is precisely that claim. That everything is reducible to or explainable in terms of the physical. That is the point at issue!